Professor Alejandro Mejías-López
email: amejiasl@indiana.edu
S668 Topics in 19th-Century Spanish American Literature
Topic: 19th Century Latin American Women Writers.
W 4:00pm – 6:30pm/class# 24024/3cr./Location TBA
Caught between such canonical figures as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
in the colonial period and Nobel Laureate Gabriela Mistral at the
onset of the 20th century, women writers and intellectuals of the
19th century received comparatively little critical notice in the
past. In recent years, however, there has been a significant change
in this trend with a growing body of work on women intellectuals and
their role in the development of Latin American modernity after
independence, becoming one of the most thriving fields in 19th
century studies and producing such critical landmarks as Francine
Masiello’s "Between Civilization and Barbarism. Women, Nation, and
Literary Culture in Modern Argentina", Jean Franco’s "Plotting
Women: Gender and Representation in Mexico", and Ileana
Rodríguez’s "House/Garden/Nation: Space, Gender, and Ethnicity in
Postcolonial Latin American Literatures by Women".
The goal of this course will be to examine the diverse literary
production of a number of Latin American women from the post-
independence period to the turn of the 20th century, exploring
issues related to the constitution of Latin American feminist
politics and theories of gender, as well as questions of
nationalism, modernity, race and ethnicity, medicine, family, and
religion. The authors studied will include both well-known writers
like Cuban Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and Peruvian Clorinda Matto
de Turner, and lesser-known writers and intellectuals such as
Peruvian Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera, Argentinian Manuela Gorriti,
and Méxican Laura Méndez de Cuenca.
Assignments will include in-class presentations, critical/analytical
short papers, and a final project. This course will be conducted
entirely in Spanish.